From the Mystery Lovers Book of Quotations

Liberal principles are all very fine as long as they leave you with something to have principles about. -- Jack Higgins

Sweep everything under the rug for long enough, and you have to move right out of the house. -- Rachel Ingalls

It's hard to live a reputation down. Especially when your actions live up to it. -- Michael Z. Lewin

A prompt man is a lonely man. - Elmore Leonard

You know who casts the first stone? The guiltiest bastard in the crowd. -- William McIlvanney

Life is the process of finding out, too late, everything that should have been obvious to you at the time. -- John D. MacDonald, "The Only Girl in the Game"

We gave her everything. But it wasn't what she wanted. -- Ross MacDonald, "The Underground Man"

Sanity is sometimes a matter of going on, outwardly, as if everything is all right. -- Mary McMullen, "Prudence Be Damned"

People without brains are always dangerous. -- A.E.W. Mason, "The House of the Arrow"

Everybody needs a little improbability in their life. -- Reginal Hill, "Deadheads"

Read This

I want to say it gently but I want to say it firmly, there is a tendency for the world to say to America the big problems of the world are yours, you go and sort them out, and then to worry when America wants to sort them out. -- Tony Blair

"How about you?" asked Christopher. "Are you happy?"
"Yes. More than happy. Content."
"Perhaps that's the secret."
"Contentment?"
"Yes. Instead of asking, 'Are you happy?', perhaps what people should really ask is, 'Are you content?'"
"Isn't that like resignation? Like giving in?"
"I don't think so. I think it's about getting in touch with reality. About balancing aspirations and actuality."
--Alan Titchmarsh, "Love and Devon"

Favorite Author Quote from Martha Grimes:"It's just like family, her people. It's the kind of thing these new writers don't understand, that readers want to feel this is a family they can walk and talk amongst. Writers these days only want to write about breakups and breakdowns, everything unraveling and everybody going to the devil."

With respect to the two parties, Democrats have far more to fear from the Tea Party movement than Republicans do. The movement, which is completely centered around the idea of limited government and reduced spending, is utterly at odds with a party dedicated to exactly the opposite.

I was born too late to appreciate Woodstock. Thank God. And thanks to loving, sane adult parenting, by the time I heard of Woodstock when I was in my teens, I thought, "Yuck," or something like that. I can't actually remember what I would have said, but I do know there was never a moment when the abandonment of self-control and the embracing of self-destruction and anarchy that was Woodstock did not repel me.

And this one, noting that the brainless Woodstock worshippers are today's authoritarians.

"The self-delusion of liberalism is bottomless. It blithely celebrates the inane though no less destructive nihilism of Woodstock while treating as nihilistic traitors serious, property-holding, taxpaying citizens who protest a statist takeover of one-sixth of the United States economy.

Beneath the well-pressed suits of those establishment liberals who are now touting the virtues of "civility" lies the sordid attire of Woodstock, illustrating once again that no one is more authoritarian than a successful left-wing protester. And as the agents of previous liberal revolutions understood acutely, the Woodstock authoritarians know that they must cow vigilant citizens into docility, for the most sweeping revolutions are not carried out against state power but with it."

***

Here's the verbalization of something long observed: the UPCHUCK FACTOR.

"The Upchuck Factor is, quite simply, the length of time it takes the US voter to decide that s/he's "had enough" of the Democrats. And it looks like this year it is hitting a new record.

You may have been taught in school, for instance, that the American people loved Franklin Delano Roosevelt so much that they would have gone on voting for him forever. In fact the American people demonstrated in the mid-term election of 1938 that they were ready to upchuck him and all his works. The 1938 elections featured an 81-seat gain in the House of Representatives for the Republicans. Figure that FDR's Upchuck Factor was 6.

What was the problem in 1938? It wasn't that complicated. After six years of political bombast and war on the private sector -- and after FDR gunned the economy into the red zone in 1936 with unprecedented stimulus -- the economy collapsed in 1937 and the American people decided that they had had enough. They determined to upchuck the New York machine politics of FDR. But then along came World War II and saved his political skin.

The 1960s is another era in which we are taught that Americans loved their government. They basked in the sun of JFK and LBJ, and loved the exciting space programs and wars on poverty. But in fact, the American people decided they had had enough after six years of it. In 1966, well before the Summer of Love, American voters upchucked and gave the Republicans 47 additional seats in the House. Two years later they sent the very un-sunny Richard Nixon to the White House. Give the JFK/LBJ Democrats an Upchuck Factor of 6.

In the late 1970s President Jimmy Carter came into office promising that he'd never lie to the American people. Maybe he didn't, but he wrecked the economy and this time the American people didn't wait six or eight years before upchucking.

It was then that the voters' digestion really started to go south. They vomited up Carter and the Democrats after four years in 1980 and elected a man that "everyone" agreed was little more than an amiable dunce. Things must have been really bad for the American people to go to that extreme. President Carter moved the Upchuck Factor to 4."

What an irritating day today. This morning, my husband's computer was attacked by one of those bloody anti-virus programs that attacks and takes over your computer in order to get you to buy the attacker's software to cure what it gave you. He always makes me deal with computer stuff, although he works on his about 18 hours a day, but it is a typewriter for him. So all my plans for the day fell through. I dealt with the attack by downloading a different virus doctor, but there was another virus in his computer that had been attaching itself to so many files for who knows how long, that when the infected files were stripped, it affected almost every program and now nothing works without a ton of lost files and runtime errors.

I should have tried a restore point first. Afterward, that would not work. So, it's about time for him to have a replacement for his Dell instead of me wasting a bunch of money at a computer store, so I ordered one, and now am pulling off all his documents and photos. I'm sure the whole "change the iPod" thing will cause him to go into a swoon, but that can't be helped.

I did buy him a Dell with an XP downgrade. I hate Vista like the ringworm. It renders a computer nearly useless.

Meanwhile, Democrats are still self-destructing all over the place:

Listen to what Texas Democrat, lipless Lloyd Doggett has to say about democracy breaking loose in his district to the Wall Street Journal in this story:

Some Democrats who have seen the sharpest attacks say that has made them more determined not to back away from public meetings. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D., Texas), who was recently heckled over health care at a supermarket, said he would attend a veterans-center opening, a community-health event and a meeting with Austin public school teachers in coming days.

"The apparent focus was to kind of create this impression that you could run me [and] supporters of this out of Dodge," he said. "That's not what is going to happen."

Lloyd, you old reprobate, you can stay in Dodge, but you just can't stay in Congress.

The Obama administration has cynically tried to hijack the Town Hall by transforming into a one way series of meetings, in which enthusiastic carefully chosen citizens voice their approval of his proposed policies. That is not an American Town Hall, it is a Soviet party meeting. In a Town Hall meeting, citizens question their elected representatives. At a party meeting, they give them their wholehearted approval. But it is a part of a pattern for the Obama administration, which works to put an All-American stamp on its un-American program.

Have you ever wondered what it's like, all cooped up inside a Trojan horse? See this.

LEAH IN MANCHESTER, NEW HAMPSHIRE: Hi, yeah, I just wanted to clarify a few things about these "manufactured, angered crowds." I've never been politically active in my life. I've never done anything like go to a protest ever. I started going to protests, these Tea Parties back on the Fourth of July, and the reason that you're seeing the numbers grow and swell and become bigger and bigger is not only because of the healthcare legislation, but like you said earlier, all these massive bills, thousands of pages long that are passed with almost no debate, no time for us to see what's in it, in direct controvertion (sp) of what was promised about transparency and a near era and we're going to know what we're doing in advance. I see, I see politicians admit on TV that they can't read it, that they can't understand it because of its complexity. Lawyers who are writing these bills say they need lawyers to tell them what's in the bill. Now, when I watch the news people stand here and tell me that I am a member of a hired mob, that I've been called up by the Republican Party, they only wish they could have done something like this. I've never been contacted by any organized group. This is an organic movement, and when people stand there, and lie to me about what I know is going on, how can I trust them when they tell me it's going to save money when the Congressional Budget Office says it isn't? That it's going to cover everybody when the Congressional Budget Office says it isn't? That it's going to let me keep my, my healthcare when common sense tells you that's not what's going to be the end result of this when the government ends up providing all the healthcare which the man who wrote the bill in the beginning says. Go watch it, Jacob Hacker who wrote this says that in time, and President Obama said it, we will all be swallowed up in this government plan.

When people lie to us, we don't trust them when they give us platitudes about what's in the bill.

ROB HARRELL, C-SPAN "WASHINGTON JOURNAL" HOST: Leah, are you planning to, are there any town halls planned in your area, in your neck of the woods?

LEAH: No, my, my Congressmen are afraid. Now they won't even come out and meet us face-to-face. They want to do some phony telephone thing so that we can't judge their facial expressions. We can't say with a follow-up question, "I'm sorry, that didn't answer my question. Could you please?" You know, yes people are getting angry. That doesn't mean it's fake. That means it's real. And by the way, about the caller who says it's all racial, the only person I've seen that's been attacked, physically attacked, is a black man who was attacked by SEIU, and he says they were black. So, I'm getting tired of the race card. I'm getting tired of the lies. I'm getting tired of the media not telling us what's in these bills but giving us a bunch of "Republicans says this, Democrats say that." I don't care.

Everything bad we knew would happen if Obama got elected is happening now.

All those folks on the fence trying to be so self-consciously post-racism instead of keeping their eye on the ball, all those gullible voters who fell for a presidential campaign that was only one degree better than those crazy emails from the lost prince of Alinskia who just needs help accessing his American bank account, what the devil do you idiots think now? Happy?

Cripes.

Mark Steyn's newest brilliant column is here. Quote: "When the community starts organizing against the organizer, the whole rigmarole goes to hell. Not that these extremists showing up at town hall meetings are real members of the "community." Have you noticed how tailored they are? Dissent is now the haut est form of coutur ism. Senator Barbara Boxer has denounced dissenters from Obama's health care proposals as too "well-dressed" to be genuine. Only the Emperor has new clothes. Everyone knows that."

I have read Baroness James' new novel, "The Private Patient." Thanks to my son Bart for giving it to me for Christmas!

Here is a wonderful quote. P.D. James is a great observer of her civilization, or what is left of it. This is a description of a character's thoughts about her family:

"But this is where I came from, these are my people, the upper working class merging into the middle class, that amorphous, unregarded group who fought the country's wars, paid their taxes, clung to what remained of their traditions. They had lived to see their simple patriotism derided, their morality despised, their savings devalued. They caused no trouble. Millions of pounds of public money wasn't regularly siphoned into their neighborhoods in the hope of bribing, cajoling or coercing them into civic virtue. If they protested that their cities had become alien, their children taught in overcrowded schools where 90 per cent of the children spoke no English, they were lectured about the cardinal sin of racism by those more expensively and comfortably circumstanced. Unprotected by accountants, they were the milch-cows of the rapacious Revenue. No lucrative industry of social concern and psychological analysis had grown up to analyse and condone their inadequacies on the grounds of deprivation or poverty. Perhaps she should write about them before she finally relinquished journalism, but she knew that, with more interesting and lucrative challenges ahead, she never would."

Our last black & white cat, the intergalactic Poirot, passed away a couple of weeks ago. He was 15 years old, had a bad heart and since April we had been taking him to a specialist every 4 weeks to have his chest cavity drained of fluid. For the first time in his life, he learned to take pills and, in an effort to put some weight back on him, eat wet cat food.

Finally, the chest taps would not work any longer. So we made an appointment with our regular vet and helped Poirot across the Rainbow Bridge before his suffering worsened or turned into a stroke or something equally awful.

I was surprised that he left the world in this way. I always thought his spaceship would come back for him someday.

He was singular and zany, and Velcroed himself to both of us. Since the original alpha cat, Bob, died 7 years ago, Poirot has occupied my lap anywhere and everywhere I sat down in the house. Lately, as he felt worse and worse, he would drape himself across his dad's chest, from arm to arm, for a comforting snooze as dad typed up his daily blog.

It has been incredibly dull around here, even with 7 dogs and 3 other cats. Here is a photo of Poirot on one of his last days as I tried to keep his skin and bones warm while waiting for a new furnace to be installed at our house. He did love that fire for a few days.

This is the first time in probably 20 years that I have not been owned by a black & white cat. Every B&W I have ever met has possessed a wonderful, friendly, quirky personality. I'm not in a position to add another pet to our household, but if I was, it would be a B&W, in a heartbeat.

Conrad Black: A 'rather successful' president with some serious achievements under his belt

An cataract of sniggering and brickbats may safely be expected as serious analysis of the presidency of George W. Bush begins, but it will not last: The historical standing of departing presidents tends to rise as emotionalism subsides.

The U.S. annual economic growth rate has been 2.2% through this presidency, the highest of any advanced country, and the economy expanded 19% in this time, well ahead of other large economies. The same pattern was replicated in per-capita income and spending, investment of all kinds and unemployment, which ran at half a percent below the average of the Clinton years and three full points below the Eurozone.

Until the last three months of his eight-year presidency, Bush avoided a recession. It is clear now that the Federal Reserve and the Treasury will prevent deflation and maintain the money supply by topping up the monetary base as credit contracts. They are already kick-restarting commercial and personal lending. They will, if necessary, propel the banking system by the scruff of the neck and the small of the back toward its real function, sensible lending, and not being hosed out of their shareholders’ underwear by imaginative, self-destructing derivative instruments, invented by the now defunct and largely unlamented U.S. investment-banking industry. George W. Bush will not be tagged with a lingering economic depression as Martin Van Buren and Herbert Hoover were.

Bush’s treaty with India, creating an alliance with that country, is one of the most important diplomatic initiatives in the world since Richard Nixon’s visit to China in 1972. But the chief preoccupation of the Bush administration has been the conflict with terrorists and terrorism-promoting states. All who remember 9/11 will recall the very high concern that, as bin Laden promised in his belligerent videos at the time, there would be imminent and frequent sequels. Yet not so much as a firecracker has gone off in the Americas since then, and President Bush deserves much credit that he has not received for this fact. Despite the current outrage in India, international terrorist action has not been a fraction of what had been feared. Terrorist organizations have been severely damaged, by the United States or with American assistance, in many infected countries.

Ironically, the issue that will mainly determine the historical ranking of the Bush presidency, the fate of Iraq, lies largely in the hands of Barack Obama. If Iraq endures as a powerful and effective anti-terrorist ally, a pro-Western regime with some power-sharing, and an alternative government model to the corrupt theocracies and secular despotisms that infest the Arab world now, the geo-strategic impact will be as immensely positive to the West as the Iranian revolution was a severe setback.

As long as the West imports large quantities of oil, it is extremely dangerous to have both major Persian Gulf countries, Iran and Iraq, in hands hostile to the West. Saddam Hussein and the Iranian Khomeinists between them, had the Saudis, Emirates and the other Gulf states quaking in their metaphorical sandals.

Those who opposed Bush’s insertion of 30,000 more soldiers into Iraq in the Surge of January 2007, and have consistently denied that it would succeed, including Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, are still officially in denial. Some have claimed that Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki is effectively an Iranian puppet. This, they allege, is why he overtly supported Obama in the U.S. election, because he wants the United States out in 16 months to facilitate the oppression of the Sunnis and the Kurds, by the Shiites, under the sponsorship of Shiite Iran. The litmus test is the integration into the Iraqi security forces of the Sunni “Awakening,” the militias and para-militaries that under U.S. blandishments, deserted al-Qaeda.

Whatever the president-elect thinks of the Iraqi initiative of his predecessor, he must be too intelligent to throw away the fruits of a military campaign that has made such dramatic progress. This is not a blood-letting impasse with draftee forces like Korea and Vietnam. In any scenario except the complete domination of all Iraq by Iran, the United States will be a long way ahead of where it was in the Middle East on September 12, 2001.

More than this, President Bush has restored the credibility of American conventional deterrence. Bin Laden and other radicals mocked the aversion of the United States to casualties, and said the U.S. would cut and run in Iraq, as it was deemed to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia. Instead, al-Qaeda has been expelled from Iraq and has been driven into caves in Pakistan. No one can contest the staying power and effectiveness of the U.S. military; its professional performance has been extremely high.

Unilateralism has not been an unalloyed success, but the point had to be made that the United States will not wait on anyone else before using force in what it considers to be its national security interest. Particularly, it will not accept that its forces can be deployed only with the prior permission of those historic exemplary upholders of international law, Germany, Russia, China and France.

I believe that something important and useful will come from the Iraqi operation, and that George W. Bush will ultimately be seen as a rather successful president. For the benefit of skeptics, I might add that this thesis — expanded into its current form at the request of my editor — has been my publicly stated view since well before there was any thought of asking this president to redress, in my own case, the failings of the American justice system.

This is the most compelling speech I've heard this year on the election:

Tonight, Barack Obama with his preinaugural address, a 30-minute television buy on some networks.I thought, ladies and gentlemen, I would precede this with a prebuttal to Obama, my own version of an inaugural address, if you will, or a campaign ad.It would go like this.

My fellow Americans, I come to you tonight a few days before an election only six days from now.These are monumental times.We face the worst economy since the Great Depression.People are losing their homes, their jobs, their businesses.Students cannot afford their college loans.Single mothers cannot afford day care; our schools are underfunded; families are growing broke paying for health care.And nobody seems to care, ladies and gentlemen.Nobody seems to represent the middle class.The question is whether we want another eight years of failed policies.I have traveled this nation.From the big cities to our small towns, I have talked to the assembly line worker in Detroit. I have talked to the farmer in Missouri, and working people of this country have had to bear the brunt of eight years of neglect, of policies that have favored the well off and the wealthy.It is time to change the course of the nation, to work together to bring an end to the division that exists in our nation.That's what this election is about: hope, change, the future.

And so it is, my fellow Americans, that I urge you to reject Barack Obama and his cynical campaign for president.I urge you to reject the policies and the wording of the charismatic demagogue.Barack Obama condemns the United States Constitution, our highest law, because it does not empower him to redistribute the income of the middle class and give it to people who do not work.Obama condemns our judicial system not because it's too liberal and too activist, but because it will not impose his left-wing policies by judicial fiat.Obama believes that the tax code should be used not to fund the legitimate purposes of government, but to massively expand the size and power of the federal government.It's time for change.It is time for the kind of change that has made this country great and the change we seek, the change that matters is change that expands our liberty, expands opportunities, expands wealth creation, and expands our horizons.It is time to celebrate capitalism, not demonize it.It's time to celebrate success, not punish it.It is time to ignite our economy, not smother it.

Barack Obama speaks the language of the socialist.Barack Obama peddles class warfare.He peddles human envy.This is not what American leaders do.This is not what would-be American presidents should do.This is the tactic of the authoritarian, to create animosity, to create anger, to create fear, all for the purpose of undermining the strength and the unity of our society.Barack Obama comes from a long line of ideologues who puts the interests of Big Government above the interests of the individual and the interests of the family.He seeks to replace the American entrepreneurial spirit with government regulations and mandates.James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, all embraced the principle that America was a different place because of its respect for the individual.They did not talk about the government redistributing wealth.They did not talk about the government punishing success.They did not talk about the government reregulating the economy.They did not say that paying more taxes was patriotic.

They believed, as our leaders have always believed, that government had limits, so that the American dream would have no limits.They believe that each human being is unique, that he or she has the ability to do great things if left alone to pursue their own interests.They believed that ordinary people could accomplish extraordinary things.They rejected outright the authoritarianism that Barack Obama represents.They each swore to uphold the Constitution because they loved it, not because they saw it as a way to take power and subvert it.Throughout our history, our leaders have understood that private property rights are key to the survival of the individual.If you take his property, you take his livelihood.If you take his property, you attack his spirit.From the day our nation was born, the preservation of private property has been considered a priority of law.Barack Obama wants to use the law to destroy private property.This is what he means, when he attacks businesses large and small, when he insists that there must be limits on what you can earn and keep and pass on to your family when you pass away.He wants the government to control your private property, your income, your assets.

In other words, my fellow Americans, Barack Obama believes that when you go to work each day, when you save some of your money, when you write your will, the federal government can and must be involved in all of those decisions.What would Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, and Reagan say about that?Jefferson and Madison would call it the abuses of monarchy. Lincoln would call it the abuses of despotism.Ronald Reagan would call it the tyranny of socialism.Our nation is built on the premise that the federal government has specific limited powers.It has important powers, yes, but they are restricted to certain activities.And the purpose of those powers is not to expand the authority of politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, but to organize society around the concept of individual liberty.The individual is not to be a slave to government, he is not to be an employee of the politician or the bureaucrat.He is to be respected and protected from government.That is why we have a Bill of Rights.It is why we have separation of powers.It is why we have states' rights.

For several decades, the left has attempted to destroy these protections.The left does not want to be hemmed in by the Constitution.They have sought ways to avert the legal limits the Founders placed on them and their ambitions, and, sadly, they have made much progress in this regard and they have placed all hope that Barack Obama will finally deliver them the victory over the American people they have craved.And make no mistake, my fellow Americans, a Barack Obama victory is a victory over the American people.And that is, in the end, what this election is really about.Will the American people remain free, or will they once and for all become servants of government?Will the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington be empowered to confiscate the hopes, the dreams, the finances, the property of the people as they see fit, any time they see fit, or will the people still be in charge of their own government and their own destiny?That is what this election is all about.

When Barack Obama says that he will make sure you do not lose your home, that you will go to college, that you will receive free health care, that you will have child care, that you will be free from want, free from desire, free from need, he repeats the lies of past authoritarians who have made the same claims and the same promises and who have delivered nothing but poverty, misery, and hopelessness.Obama represents an ideology for which there are no limits on power.He wants to lead a different kind of government, one in which there are no limits to how much it can confiscate from the people, he wants to lead a movement in which the individual is crushed under the weight of the many.And Obama, like others in the past, speaks of democracy as he pursues anti-democratic goals.As his mentor Saul Alinsky taught, you must use the language of the middle class in order to destroy it.

So I come to you, my fellow Americans, with a simple message.If you believe in the principles and the institutions that have made this nation great, that have given more liberty and prosperity to more people than any other system on the face of the earth, that have created the most tolerant and giving and successful society in human history, then I urge you to reject the candidate who rejects these and our principles.If you want to leave your children and grandchildren and generations yet to come a country that is as free and hopeful and magnificent as the country you live in today and that your parents and grandparents left you, you will reject the candidate who rejects individual liberty, private property rights, and the Constitution.Do not allow a charismatic demagogue to change our great nation in ways that will diminish it.You have your destiny and America's destiny in your own hands, you, not the media, not the pollsters, not the pundits, you will decide this election.You will decide if you want to live in America or someplace that you won't recognize in a few years.You will decide if the principles that have served this nation so well will remain our governing principles.

This election, only six days away, is the most important election in our lifetime.Everything is at stake.We know this because Obama has said so.He has thrown down the gauntlet.He is running against our history.He is running against the system.He is running against our liberty, and so it is that I ask you on November 4th, next Tuesday, vote for liberty, your own and the nations.Vote for opportunity, your own and your children's.Vote for America.Vote for McCain-Palin.You will hear Obama tonight say that we have been talking about the same problems for decades and nothing has ever been done to solve them.This may be the most accurate statement Barack Obama has made, or will make, in the campaign.We have been talking about the same problems for decades.The problem is that for most of these decades, the people who have been fixing them have made them worse.It's not that we have done nothing to solve these problems.

We have done everything the left promised would solve these problems, and not one of the problems is solved, unless Republicans achieve a majority and govern as such, and then we get welfare reform.And then we get balanced budgets, and then we get tax cuts, and then we get prosperity, and we get good national security, and we get safety.But at those times where Democrats are strong enough in Congress to blunt a Republican president, or run the whole show themselves, they look back over 50 years and they see the same problems, and we have addressed those problems and we have fixed those problems per se, and yet the beneficiaries of the solutions are still as angry and unhappy and miserable as they were 50 years ago when the liberal Democrats began the fix.It makes no sense to let them keep fixing things when all they do is break them.

It's all true, of course. In these days of newspaper and news magazine circulation collapse and falling audience numbers for the big three network news programs, the mainstream media may see this election as their last opportunity to influence the outcome of a presidential election. It remains to be seen whether the American voter will cooperate in this co-opting of Democracy or will rise up and overcome it.

Meanwhile, there appears to be one last professional journalist in America. It's not Katie Couric, bazillion dollar CBS anchor who let Joe Biden get away with saying that FDR, who was not president at the time, appeared on television, which was not yet in use, to reassure the American public after the stock market crash of 1929. It's a woman named Barbara West of Orlando's WFTV.

Barbara West had an interview with Joe Biden, and what she did is what any professional journalist would do, but no one does anymore when it's a Democrat, and that is to ask him some hard questions. Here is the interview if you want to watch it. (Wait! Today the video stream is unavailable on WFTV. Are they buckling under? Well, too bad. It's available on YouTube here.) You really should watch it, if only for the novelty of seeing a Democrat candidate get a grilling that today is reserved only for Republican candidates. Or to see the wonder and surprise and shock on Biden's face as he realizes he's being tumbled out of the usual feather bed provided by the media and his ass hits the hard floor of a real journalist's questions.

How telling is that? Joe knows the mainstream media is largely composed of liberals who are writing softball, reverential questions for the Democrat candidates. That even if they ever brought up some unpleasant truth (like Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Barack's socialist plans for the U.S. or even Biden's big whoppers at the debate), they would do it in an "I'm sorry I have to ask this," wink-wink, "I know this question is ridiculous, so let me pitch it to you soft in the middle of the strike zone, so you'll have an easy time knocking it over the fence" manner.

Joe is shocked that a journalist -- wait, there's a journalist loose here, people! -- would actually drill a breaking fastball at him.

It's funny for a few minutes, and then you realize how sad it is that it is such a rarity these days.

Among the many thing that hangs in the balance on November 4 (freedom from crippling taxation, the nationalization of our 401(K) retirement funds, the loss of health care coverage for mothers who will not abort imperfect fetuses, a Supreme Court running roughshod over the Constitution and states' rights, free speech) is the future of the press.

If Barack Obama wins, the media may be poised to become nothing more than the propaganda arm of the Democratic party and the MoveOn.org crowd. Does that sound crazy? Well, what else would they do? Suddenly develop some cajones?

If John McCain wins, the media may be forced to come to a full stop and reconsider whether it wants to continue to marginalize itself by cheerleading one party, or whether it needs to go back to the professional values that called for it to be an impartial watchdog for the republic, not a watchdog for the Democratic party.

A great essay today in the American Thinker by Lee Cary reflects my feelings on Colin Powell, a man who has always held his own self interest above all else. He endorsed the socialist Messiah today, in what he hoped might qualify as some sort of October surprise for Senator McCain. I can't imagine that anyone was surprised, least of all me. I've been waiting for him to come out of woodwork. I guess he's been busy being a character witness for crooked politicians, and I suppose that is good practice for what he did today.

General Powell & The Long Patrol

Today on NBC’s Meet the Press, Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama and walked off his long patrol with the political party that made his career.

LBJ said it was OK to piss from inside the tent facing out, or from outside the tent facing in. But it wasn't OK, he said, to piss inside the tent.

Secretary of State Powell and his close friend, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage (who was the real leaker in the Valerie Plame saga, and not Scooter Libby), made a vocation out of pissing inside the Bush administration tent during the Iraq War. For reasons that remain a mystery, George W. Bush tolerated it until both men resigned.

However you feel about Bush, the President deserved loyalty from the two people he appointed to high government positions. Or, more importantly, the Nation and the Military deserved their resignations the moment they opposed the war.

Instead, both men stayed in the administration, dragging their sea anchors all the way. This reflects honorably on neither man.

Now Powell steps outside the Republican tent and pisses in. He was inclined there a long time ago, and waited until now to open fire so as to do maximum damage to a man whose service to the country is at least as laudable as is Powell’s.

Recently, Powell appeared as a character witness at Sen. Ted Stevens’ (R-Alaska) corruption trial. About Stevens he told the jury, "As we say in the infantry, this is a guy you take on a long patrol."

History is important to study... if you can trust the national media to not withhold key information they don't want you to see or twist daily news to fit their agenda.

In the last 40 years, there have been nine major surveys of editors and reporters who work for national media. The most they ever voted Republican in a national election was 14%; the more common range has been 4% to 7%.

This is one reason why no matter who wins a political debate, the media almost en masse repeatedly tell you their man won. And most voters who don't pay close attention will believe them. It's called coordinated propaganda.

What were the most consistently repeated and strongly asserted slogans you've heard over the last few years? "We're losing in Iraq . . . we must get out . . . it's costing us $10 billion a month we could use here at home . . . we're not any safer . . . the surge won't work."

A year ago, vice presidential candidate Joe Biden opined that we should get out of Iraq immediately and then divide it into three separate countries. This is the sound, seasoned judgment that's supposed to compensate for running mate Barack Obama's youth and complete lack of experience with the military or America's security in a dangerous world!

Well, the surge in Iraq has worked, we are winning decisively and, as a result, now have a new democracy and strong ally in the Mideast. Meanwhile, seven years have passed since 9/11, and we still haven't had another major terrorist attack on our soil.

Yet the media give no credit at all to President Bush, the only president to do something about the terrorist attacks that we had suffered repeatedly beginning in 1992.

With the economy slowing and a weak financial market created solely by our subprime mortgage mess, what do we keep hearing now from the media in hopes the majority will believe it and vote accordingly? "The mess is caused by eight years of failed Bush economic policies, including the tax cuts for the rich that should be rescinded."

This is not the talk of a uniter of people, but rather a separator stirring up class warfare, envy and resentment. It's a stirring-up of hate in an attempt to endlessly criticize, condemn, demean and destroy every opponent.

Do you know the real cause of the out-of-control subprime loan mess that's creating so much fear and hurting every American? It's not something the media or a certain political party wants you to find out. A picture is worth a thousand words, however, and we've made notes of key events on the chart above that you can follow as we give you some key facts.

In 1995, President Clinton mandated new regulations that coerced banks to make significantly more subprime loans to inner-city residents previously viewed as unqualified buyers in high-risk areas. Banks were rated on how well they complied and faced big fines if they didn't do what government regulators wanted.

The government's worst decision was allowing and encouraging banks, for the first time, to bundle these subprime loans in giant packages with prime loans. These packages were then sold to other investors as safe because they were government-sponsored by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The first of these government-encouraged packages came to market in 1997. For the banks, they were profitable because they could be sold quickly and thereby absolve the banks of any risk in the loans they made. Many subprimes were variable-rate loans made without down payments or documentation of borrowers' incomes.

The banks could then use the money to make even more of these lower-quality, government-required loans, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bought them with virtual abandon.

It evolved into a Big Government pyramid scheme with Democrats in charge of Fannie and Freddie making large political donations to Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Barack Obama and other politicians who continually defended the anything-goes lending of the two agencies.

In short, this was yet another well-intended, Democrat-supported,government-designed and run program that failed miserably and had the usual unintended consequences.

A few more facts:

• April 2001: The Bush administration's fiscal budget stated that the size of Fannie and Freddie was "potential problem because financial trouble of a large Government-Sponsored Enterprise could cause repercussions in financial markets, affecting federally insured entities and economic activity."

• May 2002: The Office of Management and Budget wanted disclosure and governance principles in Bush's 10-point plan for corporate responsibility to apply to Fannie and Freddie.

• September 2003: Treasury Secretary John Snow, in testimony to the House Financial Services Committee, recommended that Congress enact legislation to create new agency to regulate and supervise financial activities of housing-related government entities to set prudent and appropriate minimum capital requirements.

Rep. Frank, the committee's ranking member, strongly disagreed, saying: "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not facing any kind of financial crisis . . . . The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we'll see in terms of affordable housing."

• February 2004: The president's new budget again highlighted risks of the explosive growth of these government enterprises and the then-low levels of required capital. It also called for the creation of a world class regulator. The administration determined that housing regulators of government agencies lacked the power and stature to meet their responsibilities and should be replaced with a strong new third regulator.

• February 2004: Greg Mankiw, chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, cautioned Congress against taking the strength of financial markets for granted. He too called for reducing the risk by ensuring that housing GSEs are overseen by an effective regulator.

• April 2004: Rep. Frank ignored warnings, accusing the administration of creating an "artificial issue." "People pay their mortgages," he told a group of mortgage bankers. "I don't think we are in any remote danger here. This focus on receivership, I think, is intended to create fears that aren't there."

From 2004 to 2008 the Bush administration made 12 more attempts to get Congress to pass legislation to have safer, sounder regulatory oversight of Fannie and Freddie and capital rules. You can see them for yourself on the White House Web site. But here are a couple of examples that show how Democrats resisted:

• July 2005: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid rejected legislation on reforming Fannie and Freddie. "While I favor improving oversight by our federal housing regulators to ensure safety and soundness, we cannot pass legislation that would limit Americans from owning homes and harm our economy in the process," he said.

• August 2007: Sen. Dodd, another Democrat, ignored President Bush's emphatic calls for Congress to pass Fannie and Freddie reform legislation and called for him to immediately reconsider his ill-advised position.

Democrats have become a far-left propaganda party with the lowest-ranked Congress in history. For six years, they have consistently refused to rein in the monumentally risky subprime loans that Clinton Democrats gave birth to.

Yet, voters are blaming Republicans for this crisis and seem to think that a newcomer they know little about, despite his questionable past associates and mentors, can bring us more huge programs. These include one that would socialize the health care system at a time when government-run systems in Canada and Britain are lower in quality and nearly bankrupt.

We will not have another 1929. The chart above shows we are in a 1937-type correction with a 1938-39 perhaps ahead. That's when England's Neville Chamberlain thought he could appease Hitler just by talking to him and getting a signature on a piece of paper that guaranteed "peace in our time."

Today, a new Hitler in Iran says he wants to have similar relations with the U.S. Are terrorists hoping that we will sign a nice agreement that gives Iran another couple of years to develop a nuclear weapon?

Finally, history shows that since World War II, our best results-oriented presidents were Truman, Eisenhower and Reagan. They were much older — in their 60s and 70s — more experienced and made sounder, more productive decisions. The three youngest presidents — Kennedy, Carter and Clinton — all had more problems, particularly with national defense and dealing with dangerous dictators that were threats to America's security.

The Crash: "Why has the market dropped so much?" everyone asks. What is it about the specter of our first socialist president and the end of capitalism as we know it that they don't understand?

The freeze-up of the financial system — and government's seeming inability to thaw it out — are a main concern, no doubt. But more people are also starting to look across the valley, as they say, at what's in store once this crisis passes.

And right now it looks like the U.S., which built the mightiest, most prosperous economy the world has ever known, is about to turn its back on the free-enterprise system that made it all possible.

It isn't only that the most anti-capitalist politician ever nominated by a major party is favored to take the White House. It's that he'll also have a filibuster-proof Congress led by politicians who are almost as liberal.

Throw in a media establishment dedicated to the implementation of a liberal agenda, and the smothering of dissent wherever it arises, and it's no wonder panic has set in.

What is that agenda? It starts with a tax system right out of Marx: A massive redistribution of income — from each according to his ability, to each according to his need — all in the name of "neighborliness," "patriotism," "fairness" and "justice."

It continues with a call for a new world order that turns its back on free trade, has no problem with government controlling the means of production, imposes global taxes to support continents where our interests are negligible, signs on to climate treaties that will sap billions more in U.S. productivity and wealth, and institutes an authoritarian health care system that will strip Americans' freedoms and run up costs.

All the while, it ensures that nothing — absolutely nothing — will be done to secure a sufficient, terror-proof supply of our economic lifeblood — oil — a resource we'll need much more of in the years ahead.

The businesses that create jobs and generate wealth are already discounting the future based on what they know about Obama's plans to raise income, capital gains, dividend and payroll taxes, and his various other economy-crippling policies. Which helps explain why world stock markets have been so topsy-turvy.

But don't take our word for it. One hundred economists, five Nobel winners among them, have signed a letter noting just that:

"The prospect of such tax-rate increases in 2010 is already a drag on the economy," they wrote, noting that the potential of higher taxes in the next year or two is reducing hiring and investment.

It was "misguided tax hikes and protectionism, enacted when the U.S. economy was weak in the early 1930s," the economists remind us, that "greatly increased the severity of the Great Depression."

We can't afford to repeat these grave errors.

Yet much of the electorate is determined to vote for the candidate most likely to make them. If he wins, what we consider to be a crisis in today's economy will be a routine affair in tomorrow's.

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The Harp Is a Beautiful Instrument of Torture

Favorite Quotes

The self-delusion of liberalism is bottomless. It blithely celebrates the inane though no less destructive nihilism of Woodstock while treating as nihilistic traitors serious, property-holding, taxpaying citizens who protest a statist takeover of one-sixth of the United States economy. - George Neumayr

You can tell the Democrats are in trouble when a naïve hockey mom from Alaska can appear out of nowhere and wrestle the entire Democratic Party to the ground. - Christopher Chantrill

...Western hand-wringers, the great progressive liberals of the Western world, would rather wring their hands, or like Darfur, hold some ... interpretive dance event to save Darfur every week for the next thirty years. The uselessness of liberal outrage is one of the great constants of the modern world. --Mark Steyn

"America, not Europe, is now the sanctuary of culture; civilization's very existence depends upon America, upon the actuality of American life, and not the ideals of the American Dream. To criticize the actuality upon which all hope depends thus becomes a criticism of hope itself." -- Delmore Schwartz, 1958

"I've got nothing to do and I'm doing it tomorrow." --Elaine Stritch

"...He is, like all great funny men, inconsolable." --John Lahr describing a famous comedian

In taking our self-examining ethos to these extremes, we have lost a kind of wisdom, wisdom that acknowledges the complexity of human life but can move through it to find the simple truth again. While assessing the intricate failings of our moral history, many of us have lost sight of the simple truth that the system that shapes us is, in fact, a great one, that it has moved us inexorably to do better and that it's well worth defending against every aggressor and certainly against as shabby and vicious an aggressor as we face today. -- Andrew Klavan

The elites in Washington, D.C., New York City and the United Nations seem to have plotted a journey to lead America into the New World Order where a cosmopolitan global citizen is no more connected to his country than a sociopath to his fellow man. -- Dimitri Vassilaros

"Obviously if you are reading this then I have died in Iraq. I kind of predicted this, that is why I'm writing this in November. A third time just seemed like I'm pushing my chances. I don't regret going, everybody dies but few get to do it for something as important as freedom. It may seem confusing why we are in Iraq, it's not to me. I'm here helping these people, so that they can live the way we live. Not have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators. To do what they want with their lives. To me that is why I died. Others have died for my freedom, now this is my mark." --Cpl. Jeffrey B. Starr, 1983-2005

Anything that doesn’t show Americans as stupid, selfish, warmongering, religious bigots, half of them living in pampered luxury in garish purpose-built Italianate mansions, the other half downtrodden in the ghetto by Halliburton stock-owning fat-cats, isn’t going to make it to the front pages or the Ten O’Clock News. --Gerard Baker

In Their Own Words: Democrats on W.M.D.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., December 1998: "Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology, which is a threat to countries in the region, and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."

Robert Einhorn, Clinton assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation, March 2002: "How close is the peril of Iraqi WMD? Today, or at most within a few months, Iraq could launch missile attacks with chemical or biological weapons against its neighbors (albeit attacks that would be ragged, inaccurate and limited in size). Within four or five years it could have the capability to threaten most of the Middle East and parts of Europe with missiles armed with nuclear weapons containing fissile material produced indigenously -- and to threaten U.S. territory with such weapons delivered by nonconventional means, such as commercial shipping containers. If it managed to get its hands on sufficient quantities of already produced fissile material, these threats could arrive much sooner."

Clinton National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, February 1998: "He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has 10 times since 1983."

...without further outside intervention, Iraq should be able to rebuild weapons and missile plants within a year [and] future military attacks may be required to diminish the arsenal again... [It's} hard to negotiate with a tyrant who has no intention of honoring his commitments and who sees nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons as his country’s salvation.--New York Times Editorial Board

Kennedy: We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction.
Byrd: The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical- and biological-warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons.--Ted Kennedy & Robert Byrd in 2002

I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force—if necessary—to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.--John Kerry in 2002

Iraq’s search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter, and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.--Al Gore in 2002

We know that [Saddam] has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.--Al Gore in 2002

In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical- and biological-weapons stock, his missile-delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al-Qaeda members.--Sen. Hillary Clinton

Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons-of-mass-destruction technology, which is a threat to countries in the region, and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.--Nancy Pelosi